Let's move over to Iraq. You might think that with a billion dollars
spent 'fighting' the Islamic State just since August -- over a billion
US taxpayer dollars -- that Iraq would be a major part of the hearing
but you would be wrong. It was largely ignored. Chair McCain addressed
it and Ranking Member Jack Reed did. Another raising the issue was
Senator Ted Cruz.

Senator Ted Cruz: How would you characterize our objective right now with regards to ISIS?Ashton Carter: To inflict a lasting defeat on ISIS. I only add the
word "lasting" to re-enforce the idea that once they're beaten, they
need to stay beaten. Which means you need to create the conditions in
Iraq and Syria so that they stay defeated.Senator Ted Cruz: And final question, in your professional judgment,
what would be required militarily for you to destroy or, as you put it,
inflict a lasting defeat on ISIS?Ashton Carter: Uh-uh, militarily it would be the, uh-uh-uh,
dismantlement of their forces and their networks. And, uh-uh, to get to
the point about lastingly to -- there's a political ingredient of this
uh-uh which I uh need to add which is to have them replaced in Iraq and
Syria with, uhm-uh, a government that the people, uh, want to be part
of, uh, and so they don't have to be governed by maniacs and terrorists.

While Barack worried about diplomacy in Saudi Arabia, a natural event took place in Iraq.The persecuted decided to persecute. EFE reports:

A militant group including Yazidi and Syrian Kurdish fighters has
killed at least 25 Arab civilians on the perimeters of the northwestern
Iraqi town of Rabia, on the Syrian border, an official source announced
on Tuesday.
Hosam al-Abar, a member of Niniveh's Provincial Council, told Efe
that a series of barbaric revenge attacks targeted four Arab villages
located 120 kilometers (74 miles) west of Mosul.The attacks were carried out by Yazidi fighters supported by militias affiliated to Syrian Kurdish parties.

'Pity us! Feel sorry for us! Now look the other way as we kill and kidnap!'

This is only a manifestation of the hateful remarks some Yazidis were
making publicly in 2013 and 2014. Their being trapped on the mountain
was a crisis and did require humanitarian aid being dropped to them.
That's really all the US should have committed. (And that's all we
advocated for here.) In Iraq, the Yazidis are basically the short man
at the party -- chip on their shoulder and easily outraged.Years of being called "Satan worshipers" took their toll long before the Islamic State showed up.Now they've mistaken global pity for permission to destroy and kill.

The
fallout from the massacre saw Yazidi leaders, who have become
responsible for parts of Sinjar newly liberated from the IS group,
organized a meeting. They condemned the massacre and promised that such
an act would never be repeated. They also said that the fighters who had
carried out these acts were not able to be identified as they don’t
belong to any of the known fighting factions.

The
provincial council says that there are now around a thousand families
who have left their homes and who are in need of shelter and aid. On the
ground in the area are hundreds of armed men from the villages which
were attacked, vowing to protect what is theirs should they be attacked
again. In the middle are a handful of Iraqi Kurdish military. Right now
things are relatively calm but if tribal justice – which calls for
reparations and an eye for an eye - continues to be meted out, it is
hard to say how long it will stay that way.

As
for Zahra, she found shelter in the home of a nearby relative. But she
couldn’t stand not knowing what had happened to her family whom she had
left at the mercy of very angry fighters. So, still wearing the same
black clothing she had on the night of the attack, she returned to her
village to search for her husband and two young sons. She eventually
found their burnt corpses in one of the houses in the village that had
been set on fire.

Vengeance doesn't usually end violence. It's a mirror to -- reflects and reproduces -- violence.